


Can't Stop The Feeling

by somesortofdeliciousbiscuit



Category: New Blood (TV)
Genre: Gratuitous references to Mean Girls and Justin Timberlake songs, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7487877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somesortofdeliciousbiscuit/pseuds/somesortofdeliciousbiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ever since he found out that Stefan essentially works as an undercover operative for the Serious Fraud Office a lot of the time, he’s been curious about how that works. As a police officer, it strikes him as something the SFO probably shouldn’t be doing. As a friend, it strikes him as pretty dangerous work for Stefan, considering who they’ve gone after and what the consequences have been so far. Arrash doesn’t fancy being shot at or trapped in a car about to burn to death ever again, thank you very much.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Them other boys don't know how to act

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was literally born out of a simple desire for Rash to run into Stefan while Stefan was undercover in his glasses. Now it's devolved into a headcanon-fuelled, angst-filled, UST-driven tale of miscommunication and Stefan's innumerable, adorable quirks that Rash loves him for. I hope you enjoy it! Oh and this is set after case 3 so there'll be spoilers for that.

Leila watches him over the rim of her glass as she takes a sip of her wine.

“You seem distracted,” she says.

Arrash scoffs, glancing away from her to their right. Beside them at the table, Leila’s workmates are cooing over a picture of someone’s kid nephew. Or was it niece?

The phone makes its way into Leila’s hands by way of some insistent shoving and she breaks off from staring at Arrash to look down at it. “Oh, your cousin is so _cute_ ,” she says.

Ah, right. Cousin.

The small fragment of shame he feels must show on his face because when Leila hands the phone back, she gives him a knowing look.

“What?” he asks, hunching his shoulders defensively.

“Distracted,” she proclaims. A pause follows in which Leila seems to be making her mind up about something. Whatever it is, Arrash can tell he won’t like the next sentence out of her mouth.

Leila takes another delicate sip of her drink—far too casual—and asks, “Is this about Stefan?”

Once, she’d have said ‘work’. Now she says ‘ _Stefan’_. The name alone makes his relatively bad mood worsen. “Really?” he says. “Does _everything_ have to be about him now with you?”

Arrash sees Leila’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rise and knows instantly that he’s said the wrong thing.

“With _me_?” she says. “I think you’re getting us mixed up.”

He opens his mouth to answer, but it turns out he’s lost his words in the face of how disgustingly right his sister is. Maybe she should’ve been the detective. After all, she’s always been better at getting to the truth of the matter than him.

Arrash is just about to retort something senseless that would undoubtedly have caused him to receive the rough edge of Leila’s tongue when he notices her gaze slide away from him and fix on something over his shoulder.

A grin spreads on her face. “Speak of the devil.”

Arrash whips his head around to see Stefan and another man being shown to a table across the restaurant.

Stefan looks… a bit like he did the second time Arrash met him when he had to push the idiot out of the way of a lorry. He’s dressed in a suit for once (a _nice_ suit, Arrash can’t help but notice) and his hair is pushed back (which does not make him look sexy, damn Leila for making him watch that film).

Also, he’s wearing glasses.  These may or may not make him a tiny bit sexy. Sexy to other people, Arrash thinks firmly. Not to _him_.

“He looks good,” Leila says, genuine approval warming her tone. “I didn’t know Stefan wears glasses.”

“He doesn’t,” Arrash replies, frowning.

Since meeting and, more recently, moving in with Stefan, Arrash has learned a horrifying array of facts about him. Stefan dumps about four sugars in his coffee (repulsive). Stefan goes to sleep with the TV on (freak). Stefan is an unironic fan of Justin Timberlake (hilarious).  Stefan prefers spearmint to peppermint (permissible).

Stefan—despite a tendency to squint when he reads—has 20-20 vision.

All this knowledge is horrifying because it means Arrash knows far too much information about someone he purports not to like as much as he does. And it’s fairly intimate, personal information, at that. Some people don’t even know their own spouse’s blood type.

“What’s he doing here?” Arrash wonders aloud.

The restaurant is small enough that he can see Stefan and his companion clearly, but not small enough to hear what they’re saying as they sit down and begin to peruse their menus. The unknown man looks to be in an even nicer suit than Stefan’s. Three-piece job, well-tailored to fit his broader frame. He’s older—his dark hair is streaked with grey. Probably mid-to-late-forties, if Arrash had to guess.

“Could it be more of his mysterious SFO business?” Leila asks. “Oh, are the geek-glasses his _disguise_? Who does he think he is, Clark Kent?”

Arrash has to suppress a smile at the memory of Stefan ripping his own shirt when he was drugged and declaring he was Superman. “Something like that. Here, swap seats with me.”

“What? Why?”

Arrash turns back around in his chair to glare at his sister. “I can’t keep craning my neck like this, it’ll look weird. And it’s starting to hurt.”

“Staring at him for the rest of the night won’t just look weird, it _is_ weird. I swear, you two really are obsessed with each other.” Despite her protest, Leila stands up and grudgingly swaps sides on the table. Leila’s friends don’t bat an eyelid, too used to the siblings’ teasing and quirks to comment.

“Happy now?” she asks once they’re resituated.

“Ecstatic.”

Leila rolls her eyes and seamlessly integrates herself back into the conversation her colleagues are having about the junior doctors’ strikes, apparently ignoring him now.

This leaves Arrash free to observe Stefan and his companion uninterrupted. Neither are angled enough towards him that they should notice his surveillance, at least.

Ever since he found out that Stefan essentially works as an undercover operative for the Serious Fraud Office a lot of the time, he’s been curious about how that works. As a police officer, it strikes him as something the SFO probably shouldn’t be doing. As a friend, it strikes him as pretty dangerous work for Stefan, considering who they’ve gone after and what the consequences have been so far. Arrash doesn’t fancy being shot at or trapped in a car about to burn to death ever again, thank you very much.

He watches a waiter take the man’s order and then Stefan’s. He hears Stefan laugh too loudly at something the man says. He watches them eat a starter while discussing something animatedly.

After the plates are taken away, Stefan gets up from the table and heads for the restrooms. Without him there, Arrash’s view of Stefan’s dinner companion improves and he takes in the man’s relaxed, arrogant way of leaning back in his chair, the expensive-looking watch on his wrist. He looks as if he believes he owns the place. Perhaps he does—you can never tell in London.

Then, Arrash sees him take out a white tablet, drop it in Stefan’s glass of water, and swirl it around to mix it in.

Arrash’s vision goes weirdly dark at the edges. It feels like the temperature in the room has just dropped several degrees.

“Rash?” Leila’s voice gives him a jolt, less for the disturbance of his focus but for how far away she had sounded despite being right in front of him.

“He just put something in Stefan’s glass.”

“What? Rash—”

Arrash stands up, knocking his hip against the table in his haste to get around it. As he charges over to the other table, Stefan returns and sits down again, smiling at the bastard who would presume to drug him. His hand stretches out towards the glass.

Without thinking, Arrash calls out “Police!” and everyone in the restaurant turns to look at him. The buzz of chatter stops along with the clink of cutlery.

Stefan’s eyes meet his, wide and confused. He jumps out of his chair like a scalded cat when he recognises Arrash, his mouth starting to shape the letter ‘R’.

“Police,” Arrash repeats, cutting Stefan off before he can make it clear that they know each other. This time, the word is more authoritative. Less frantic. “Sir, I just saw this man put something in your drink.”

There’s a loud scrape as the man pushes his chair back to stand up too, drawing himself up to his full height. It’s still a few inches below Arrash’s. “I did no such thing,” the man says, his measured words spoken in an upper-class accent attesting to years of private schooling and privilege. No wonder he can’t take no for an answer. “This is preposterous.”

“Really?” Arrash goes on, keeping his voice deadly calm even as his heart is racing from a sudden burst of adrenaline. “You’re going to stand there and lie when I just saw you do it?”

“It’s the truth. What is this? Are you jealous that this man—” here he indicates a still baffled-looking Stefan, “—enjoys my company? I saw you staring at him from the moment we walked in.”

“Jealous?” Arrash repeats incredulously. “Of you? Please. I don’t have to drug people to get them to sleep with me.”

“With an attitude like yours, I find that surprising. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life. Come on, Stefan.” The man moves around the table and puts his hand on Stefan’s lower back as if to lead him away then and that tears it. Before he knows quite what he’s doing, Arrash is striding forward and punching the man in the face. Hard.

“Rash!” Stefan shouts and _wow_ , he really is bad at this undercover stuff. Stefan looks at him and must catch his expression of utter disbelief. “I mean,” he says haltingly, “that—that was really _rash_ of you!”

Stefan proceeds to give him a helpless sort of half-grimace-half-smile, which Arrash can only shake his head at despairingly.

Meanwhile, the man Arrash just punched is on the floor at their feet, holding his nose while blood gushes out of it. “You broke it,” he says thickly, the ‘t’ sound becoming a pitiful ‘b’.

Stefan glances down at him and his face changes into a look that’s equal parts irritation and resolve. “Shut it,” he tells him, then addresses Arrash. “You have to get out of here,” he says, “before the actual police come.”

A comment about _being_ actual police comes to mind, as usual. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to end up getting arrested for assault!”

“Neither do I,” Leila says from behind them. She makes a grab for Arrash’s wrist and tugs. “Come on.” Her friends are at her back. Rachel has her phone pressed to her ear and is looking down at the squirming, groaning man with disdain. She’ll be calling the police.

“You were never here,” Rachel says. “Don’t worry.”

Arrash looks back at Stefan who, despite what just happened, looks to be calm and collected. The only thing betraying him is the dishevelment of his hair where he’s just ran a hand through it. He looks more like himself now.

“Are you all right?” Arrash asks. There’s no way he’s leaving if the answer is ‘no’.

“I’m fine,” Stefan replies, sounding fondly exasperated. Too fond by half, considering they’re pretending they don’t know each other.

Arrash shifts on the spot, still unsure whether to leave Stefan like this.

With a strange, soft little smile pulling at his mouth, Stefan abruptly steps right into his personal space. Before Arrash can question it, Stefan presses a hand to his right cheek and a gentle kiss to his left, and uses the cover provided by that gesture to quietly tell him, “I’ll see you later. Go.”

For the benefit of their audience, he steps back and says more loudly, “Thanks for the rescue, handsome stranger.”

All at once, Arrash feels like he’s done about ten shots of that awful 95% Polish rectified spirit. His head is spinning. His cheeks are burning. “Any time,” he says faintly when he manages to gather his wits again.

Stefan’s eyes gleam with amusement as he tilts his head towards the door and raises his eyebrows. Somehow though, Arrash can’t bring himself to move or look away.

In the end, it’s Leila who hauls him away with a muttered, “Come on, you _idiot_.”

Instead of turning to look in the direction he’s going, Arrash keeps his gaze on Stefan.

Stefan gives him a wink. “I’m _fine_ ,” he says.

With that said, Arrash finally lets himself be pulled out of the restaurant.

 

* * *

 

Leila is giving him a headache with the force of her glare. Despite her being stood four people away with her back to him in the crowded tube carriage, Arrash can just _feel_ her ire. The buffer of having the friendly faces of Joanne and Isabella between them is useless. It’s sibling telepathy—they’ve had a lifetime to cultivate it and for Leila to learn to weaponise it.

Stops go by, people get off the train, people get on. Leila ends up getting jostled until she’s right next to him.

“What were you thinking?” she hisses when she’s deemed her frosty silence to have gone on long enough.  “ _Were_ you thinking?”

“Hey now,” Joanne says. “He was saving that guy from potential date-rape!”

“Yes,” Arrash says, waving a hand in her direction. “Thank you, Joanne!”

“You’d already ‘saved’ him when you pointed out what you saw, you didn’t need to risk your _career_ by hitting him!”

Arrash blows out a frustrated breath, shaking his head. “You know the only thing I hate more than racists is rapists.”

The train slows and a glance at the underground map above tells him it should be their stop. After quick hugs are exchanged between the girls, Leila all but leaps out of the carriage as soon as the doors open. She heads for the exit without a backward glance.

“I think what you did back there was great, honestly,” Isabella says when Arrash turns to say his own sheepish goodbyes. “It almost happened to my sister. Wish somebody’d had the guts to lamp him.”

Joanne nods her agreement and Arrash smiles at them both. “Thank you, ladies. I’ll buy you a drink next time we’re out to apologise for cutting the evening short tonight.”

They wave after he disembarks and he can’t quite keep down a proud grin at their response. At least he’s endeared himself to _some_ people.

 

* * *

 

When he walks into the family home, he can hear the tell-tale crack of a wine bottle cap being opened. He goes into the kitchen to find Leila at the island pouring herself a generous helping.

She makes quick work of drinking it, holding up a hand to impress upon Arrash that he shouldn’t speak until she’s done.

“Right,” she says after finishing the glass. “I’m ready to have this conversation now.”

“Look, I just saw red and I—”

“No, not about that. I’m done with that now, if there _are_ any consequences you’ll deal with them. No, I want to talk about Stefan.”

Arrash loosens his tie, sets his elbows on the counter, and rubs his temples. “Jesus, what _about_ him?”

“You really like him, don’t you?”

There’s a quiet, pitying quality to the question. It has gravity, like Leila wants him to actually consider his answer. So Arrash squashes the knee-jerk denial that springs up his throat while he tries to muster up a better response.

“I know you, Rash,” Leila goes on when it becomes apparent he’s not going to answer any time soon. “I know how you are when you like someone. Have done since I was in Year Five and you were in Year Seven and you were head over heels for Alex Wilkins.”

“I wasn’t ‘head over heels’.”

“Rash.”

Arrash looks up at her. The resigned slant of her eyebrows asks for honesty.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t even know how I feel,” he admits in a rush. “The bloke’s a menace, he drives me crazy!”

Leila says nothing. Again, Arrash thinks what a good detective she would make. She knows all the tricks to get him to talk.

“But,” he sighs. “But he drives me crazy in—in other ways, I guess.”

There’s the sly curve of his dopey grin to contend with, the warm hazel of his eyes that turn green in sunlight. That weird high-pitched laugh he sometimes does, the way he gets Arrash on even his worst days and cuts through all of the bullshit to make _him_ laugh again.

“You never go for guys you like,” Leila says, sadness in her tone.

They’ve had this conversation before. Arrash steals Leila’s wineglass out of her hand and pours himself a more respectable amount than she did, swirling the burgundy liquid around the glass as he considers his next words.

“I know it’s the twenty-first century, Leila. I know the discovery that I’m gay is way less likely to get me kicked off the force than, say, punching would-be rapists in the face. I _know_.”

“Mum would be okay with it too,” Leila says. Slowly, like she thinks she has to be careful on the subject. “I think she must know by now, or at least suspect.”

Cold dread slices through Arrash when he realises he’d forgotten all about their mother and the possibility of her overhearing. He barely has the time to look over his shoulder though before Leila is saying, “Embroidery class.”

“Ah.”

“She’d be okay,” Leila insists.

“What about you?” Arrash says. At her frown, he expands. “You fancy him, don’t you? Stefan?”

Leila smiles. “He _is_ very cute. Funny too.” The smile fades and she looks briefly wistful. “But in all seriousness? We’re from different worlds as far as work goes, even if all we’re both doing is trying to help people. All the secrets involved in what he does would get to me, I think. And I’ll hopefully be heading to medical school next year. It would be a bad time to start something with anyone.”

“So you wouldn’t go for him?”

Before Leila can answer that, Arrash’s phone rings. Or rather, it blares ‘Sexyback’ at a volume that’s embarrassing beyond belief. There’s no need for caller ID, Arrash knows exactly which _bastard_ must have made it do that. “It’s—”

“Stefan,” Leila finishes the sentence with an unholy grin. “I won’t ask.”

“I’d better—”

Leila waves him off. “Go, go. I’m going to call Rachel, see if she got home all right after she stayed.”

Phone still proclaiming that ‘other boys don’t know how to act’, Arrash drops a kiss on his sister’s forehead as he passes by to take the call in the sitting room.

“Stefan? Are you all right?”

“Rash,” Stefan’s voice says in one long breath. “Rash, I’ll be honest with you—I  am not great.”

He sounds… drunk? After what happened earlier, it’s worrying enough to get the hairs on the back of Arrash’s neck all standing to attention. “Stefan, where are you? Are you at home?”

“I,” Stefan declares, “am home. Lovely home. Our home, which is lovely.”

Well, he’s definitely at least tipsy. “Are you on your own?”

“Yep, very lonely on my ownsome right now. Are you going to come get me?”

Arrash doesn’t think it necessary to say that if Stefan is at the flat then it hardly counts as coming to get him. But it’s not like there’s any question that Arrash _wouldn't_ go wherever Stefan asked him at this point. “Yes, Stefan, I’m coming home now.”

A pause follows that has Arrash checking the call hasn’t dropped, then Stefan says “’kay,” in more of a half-yawned mumble than an actual agreement.

Arrash waits for him to say more. “You sure you're okay, Stef?”

“Completely,” Stefan says. “Turns out I always was!”

Arrash can’t make any sense of that, so he ignores it and focuses on the fact that it sounds like Stefan will _probably_ be fine until he can get to him. “Stay put,” he instructs. “Drink some water and I’ll be with you before you know it.”

“Cool,” Stefan says and then hangs up.

 

* * *

 

After a journey that somehow seemed to take a century, Arrash is finally back in Stratford and traipsing up the stairs to their flat.

The best outcome would be that Stefan has done as he said: gulped down some water and sobered up a bit in the time since they last spoke. It’s nearing eleven o’clock already. Despite going out, Arrash had still hoped to get an early night to be fresh for whatever Heywood and Sands might throw at him tomorrow morning—no such luck.

He unlocks the front door and lets himself in, calling out, “Stefan? It’s Rash.”

No answer comes. Arrash is just about to shout again when the door to the larger bedroom (naturally Stefan got that one) opens to reveal a rumpled Stefan squinting out at him. His tie is gone, the top three buttons of his shirt have been opened, and there are flecks of blood on the collar.

Arrash reaches out towards it. “Are you—?”

“It’s not mine,” Stefan says, leaning away from Arrash’s hand. He looks and sounds annoyed, which Arrash was not expecting in the slightest after Stefan’s over-the-top gratitude act earlier. Maybe it was _all_ just an act. But why would Stefan be pissed off with him?

“Can I come in?” Arrash asks uncertainly.

“Be my guest.”

Stefan throws his door open wide in an expansive, definitely not-quite-sober gesture and turns back around to head inside.

Arrash follows, a spark of retaliating annoyance igniting as his confusion grows.

“Why are you pissed off with me?” he asks when he’s crossed the threshold.

Stefan’s room is, as usual, something of a tip. It's nowhere near as bad as the flat he’d been sharing with Jan and the others but it's also nowhere near the standard of cleanliness and order that Arrash keeps his room in. Nothing is on the floor in Arrash’s room; meanwhile, Stefan has got socks, a tennis racket, and CDs all lying about ready to trip up unsuspecting visitors.

Stefan splays himself over the middle of his bed, about a 60-40 split of sat up and laying down. Arrash remains stood by the door, sentry-like.

“Did you get the milk?” Stefan asks.

“Did I—” Arrash looks around in disbelief, but of course there’s nothing and no one there to give him the strength he needs to cope with this. “No, Stefan, I didn’t. Funnily enough, I was a bit preoccupied with coming to check on you first.”

“Didn’t ask for your help.”

The belligerent tone kindles the spark of anger into a small flame. “You sure about that? You certainly needed it earlier.”

Stefan has the gall to laugh then. “Dispersible aspirin,” he says.

“Disp—what?” Arrash runs the words through his brain three times and they still make no more sense. He wants aspirin?

“It was dispersible aspirin,” Stefan says. “In _his_ glass. Not mine.”

Arrash freezes.

“You really shouldn’t hit people on blood thinners,” Stefan continues almost casually. “They took Professor Walsh to hospital.”

Shit. _Shit._ But he saw—

He _saw_ —

Stefan shakes his head at him. “They said he’d be all right. I offered to go with him, but I think he was annoyed with me for some reason. Maybe it was because of the interfering moron who decided to stick his nose where it didn’t belong.”

Shit. Arrash drags a hand down his face, stunned. So he got it totally wrong. He was lucky Leila did get him away… He could just imagine Heywood’s face as he decided to fire him for good this time.

Why didn’t the man _say_ it was his own medication? From his reaction, he was probably just too affronted by getting accused of spiking someone’s drink in a crowded restaurant… and then Arrash hit him. He didn’t get much of a change to explain himself, really.

“Who was he?” Arrash asks.

“Can’t talk about my work.”

This again. Arrash huffs out a mirthless laugh. “Right. Your _work_. You know, I may have been wrong about this professor of yours, but what if I was right? What if I hadn’t been there tonight?”

“What are you on about?”

The flame becomes an inferno and Arrash explodes. “I’m on about a complete amateur working undercover! Are you even trained for this? Do you have backup every time? Did anyone even _know_ you were in that restaurant with him tonight?”

Stefan’s face says it all. Arrash knows him well enough by now to see when all his clever comebacks have abandoned him.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then,” Arrash continues. “So you go around pretending to be someone you’re not with dangerous men, and then you’re surprised when they try to drug or—or take advantage of you? Both of those things have already happened! You do _remember_ what happened with David Leese, right?”

Arrash is pretty sure that, since meeting Stefan, he’s never seen him look genuinely furious as he does now. Scared, happy, smug, condescending, thoughtful—yes. Never as angry as this. If Arrash weren’t so angry himself, that realisation might be enough to make him back down.

“If I hadn’t done all of that,” Stefan says in a low voice, “we never would have got him, or Ruhn Laboratories, _or_ UK Remicon. Or any of them since. This is my job, Rash, I get results.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed and I can’t—”

Arrash breaks off. He doesn’t even know himself where he was going with that. Can’t let that happen? Can’t stand the very idea of it?

“Can’t what?” Stefan demands.

Arrash thinks fast, lets his anger provide the answer. “I can’t keep bailing you out of the situations you get yourself into.”

“You didn’t bail me out! You just about sabotaged my entire operation! My target is in the _hospital_ and I almost asked how he knew who I was because I thought it _was_ like when I was drugged before. I thought I’d been found out and nearly exposed myself in the process because of you!”

“‘Operation’?” Arrash repeats. “‘Target’? You work for the SFO, Stefan, not MI5. This cloak and dagger act isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing! It can’t be legal; who even approved this? Your boss?”

Stefan shakes his head, rolling over onto his side to put his back to Arrash. “You don’t know a damn thing about my work.”

“That’s right, because you don’t _tell_ me.”

“Because I _can’t_.”

“Right, unless you need to use my warrant card because you want me to lose _my_ job.”

“I don’t want that,” Stefan protests softly.

The futility of the conversation hits Arrash then. The rage drains away, leaving him sagging back against the door without that righteous anger there to buoy him up. Instead, resignation fills him until he feels so weighed down that he just can’t go over this same ground anymore. He’s tired.

“Whatever,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Stefan’s shoulders lift in a shrug. He doesn’t turn back to look at Arrash. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Arrash mutters. More to himself than to Stefan.

He doesn’t slam the bedroom door on his way out, just lets it close firmly, finally, and then heads to his own room.


	2. You reflect me, I love that about you

“Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?”

Arrash smooths a hand over his tie and sits up straighter as he probably should when his senior officer is addressing him. “No one, Sarge.”

Sands gives him a sceptical look over the top of his computer, where he’s looming like the portent of doom that he is in Arrash’s life. It’s so close to being five o’clock in the evening; Arrash _was_ hoping to make it through the day and get to leave without issue. Of course it wasn’t to be.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m—”

“Oh wait,” Sands interrupts. “I just remembered: I don’t care about your personal problems. Now stop moping about the place, would you? You’ve been bringing down the whole office all day.”

Arrash barely refrains from rolling his eyes. Barely. It’s made easier by keeping his gaze fixed somewhere around his keyboard. “Sorry, Sarge. Won’t happen again, Sarge.”

“But it _is_ happening again, Sayyad. It’s happening even as I’m speaking to you now.”

The fake smile Arrash plasters on in response only serves to make his Sergeant’s face darken further. Sands seems to deliberate over something, have a brief internal argument with himself, and then come to a decision he’s not happy about if his grimace is anything to go by.

“Oh for God’s sake,” he says. “Get your bloody coat.”

Arrash does so, knowing better by now than to dawdle. “We got a case?” he asks.

“I wish.” And here Sands actually _does_ look as though he wishes for a dead body. “No, Sayyad, we’re leaving early. We’ve got a training exercise to do.”

 

* * *

 

“This doesn’t seem like a training exercise to me,” Arrash says when Sands returns from the bar.

They’ve ended up in a traditional pub, all worn-down wood and stained red-brown upholstery. The stale odour of cigarettes hangs in the air despite the smoking ban, no doubt the fault of the few obvious regulars propping up the bar or playing darts with serious looks on their faces.

Sands sits himself down heavily, sliding one of the two beers he’d just bought across the table towards Arrash. “Top marks, detective.” Sands pauses and looks down at the proffered pint with a frown. “You do, er, drink, right?”

To prove a point, Arrash takes the glass and downs half of it. “I told you,” he says. “I’m not a Muslim.”

Sands watches the display with a neutral expression, shrugs, and picks up his own drink. “That you did. Now, get on with it.”

“With what?”

“With telling me the reason why you’ve got a face like a slapped arse today.”

Arrash clenches his jaw and looks away for a moment. “Fight with a friend last night,” he says shortly, taking a drink again to distract himself away from the urge to take any of this out on his DS.

“Seems like more than that to me. In fact, you look just like I used to when my missus was driving me up the wall. Maybe it’s a more-than-friend friend?”

“I thought you didn’t care about my personal problems?”

“Is that what you thought?” Sands asks in that infuriating, patronising way of his. “For once you’d be absolutely right. What I _do_ care about is having a TDC with his head on another planet instead of in the game where I need it. So this is your training exercise for the day: we drink beer, you talk, and then you become your normal smart-arse self again tomorrow, all right?”

The funny thing is that Arrash is actually tempted by this offer. He actually _wants_ to just blurt out all the things that have been going around and around in his head all day, and with _Sands_ of all people. It’s awkward to talk to Leila about Stefan now and, loathe though he is to admit it, _besides_ Stefan, there’s no friend that comes to mind who he would choose to have a conversation like this with.

When did his life become so tangled up with Stefan’s that he started to neglect the friendships he’d had before?

Sands raises his eyebrows and makes a circular ‘go on’ gesture with his hand.

The second Arrash decides to just do as he’s told and get it all off his chest, he realises the words have already queued up in his throat, ready to come tumbling out at a moment’s notice.

“So he’s pissed off because I had a go at him—” Arrash stops the tirade before it can really begin and casts a glance at Sands. “This _friend_ ,” he clarifies, cagey.

The unimpressed look Sands gives him is terribly familiar by this point. “Look,” he says. “I may have been mysteriously ill on the day of equality and diversity training, but I’m not a total bastard, and I don’t actually care if you’re into men, women, or both. I don’t get it, but I don’t care. So just spill your guts, because if I have one more day of looking at your miserable face, I’ll have you back in uniform in a heartbeat. Now, don’t make me tell you again. Get _on_ with it.”

Arrash blinks rapidly, taken aback. All that time spent worrying about coming out to _anyone_ and this is the response he gets from the man who genuinely asked if his surname was some kind of greeting and couldn't force the word ‘husband’ out of his mouth when they spoke to Michael Freeland’s partner.

“Um, right. Thank you, Sarge. So—so I had an argument with this guy because he keeps getting himself into these stupid, dangerous situations for work.”

“Is he on the force too then?”

Arrash snorts. “He wishes.” He recalls Stefan’s disturbing intensity when they were questioning Bruce Lockwood, how excited he was to be going interviewing with him in the first place, his insistence that he play bad cop. Stefan seems to go around thinking he’s the hero in his own movie—he’s got his enigmatic undercover work, and he always finds time to trade quips and flirt with girls when he’s not busy jumping off rooves or running away from exploding vehicles.

“So let me get this straight.” Sands pauses then, lips twitching. “Figuratively speaking.”

Arrash shakes his head at the unbelievably crap pun, waiting for his Sergeant’s undue mirth to subside.

“All right,” Sands goes on. “All right, so you were worried about him and that made you have a go at him?”

“I… guess?”

“You’re a bloody idiot, Sayyad.”

“I always am, to you. Why this time?”

“Because shouting the odds is hardly the best way to let someone know you care.”

Silence falls. Mainly because Arrash is stunned to hear his hard-boiled superior expressing such a sentiment.

“Oh, don’t look so surprised,” Sands grumbles. “I was a happily married man for more than ten years, you know. Rule number one is you apologise first, which leads nicely into rule number two, which is that you’re always the one in the wrong.”

“What’s rule number three?”

“No, her bum doesn’t look big in that.”

Sands laughs and Arrash joins him. Amazingly, it’s the lightest, easiest moment they’ve spent in each other’s company.

Sands seems to realise that at the same time because his face abruptly shutters and he looks dismissive again. “So is that it?” he asks.

If only. _If only_ that were all of it. “Well, there’s also the fact that he seems to fancy my sister, she sort of fancies him, and I’m not even sure what I...” Arrash waves his hand vaguely and hopes the gesture somehow conveys the word ‘feel’ because he doesn’t want to say it aloud. “Or if he even-” Arrash makes the same gesture, “with me, you know?”

He then drains the remainder of his pint in a burst of self-pity. Raucous cheers come from over by the dartboard—someone’s just won the game for their team.

“Your sister?” Sands says. “Christ, you don’t do things by halves, do you, Sayyad?”

“No, sir. Oh, and I almost forgot: we just moved in together.”

“Moved in to— _Christ_. Renting?”

“Yeah, but he wanted us to _buy_ a flat together initially. Stefan reckons rent is a waste of money but he came around when he saw this place.”

“So how long have you two known each other?”

Arrash does a quick mental calculation, recalls that his six months’ probation period has just come to an end and he met Stefan right around the time he first got the TDC post. “About six months?”

Sands chokes on his latest mouthful of beer, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth once he’s finished coughing. “Six months? I thought you were going to say six years! And he wanted to, what, go halves on a mortgage?”

Arrash nods. He wonders if he should bring up the fact that Stefan actually proposed the idea after their first case which was… just one week into their acquaintance. Probably not. It could push Sands over the edge he’s clearly teetering on with this new knowledge.

“And you _don’t_ think he feels… some sort of way about you?” Sands asks, incredulous. “Getting a mortgage together is more commitment than getting a ring these days, Sayyad, surely even you know that. Seems this Stefan doesn’t do things by halves either.”

Sands drums his fingers on the table, eyes directed up and to one side as if remembering something. “Bromley said that about you too, by the way,” he continues. “That you’re an all-in sort of bloke. It was one of the positives in their report about you.”

Arrash perks up slightly at hearing that. “There were positives?”

“Of course there were, you idiot. You wouldn’t have been taken on otherwise.”

It’s not much, but it’s a little bit of a confidence boost. “Do you mind telling me the others?”

“Fishing for compliments, are we?”

“No, I—”

“Relax. I’m pulling your leg, genius. They said you’re smart, committed, and you’re a good problem-solver. They also said you’re perceptive, good at reading people.”

Those are all decent qualities to possess, in Arrash’s opinion. It’s nice to hear that Bromley thought he had _some_ merit, even if they were put off by the fact that he can’t keep his damn mouth shut.

“Now,” Sands says. “I reckon that all means you can figure out what to do about this mess of a love life of yours.”

Arrash certainly hopes so. “Probably,” he replies.

“Have to do better than ‘probably’,” Sands says. “Don’t forget my promise about you being back in uniform. I don’t see one smug look tomorrow, I’m getting Heywood to start the paperwork, got it?”

Arrash smiles, despite how bad-tempered Sands looks in return. “Got it.”

“Fantastic. Now, that’ll be three pounds ninety.”

“What?”

Sands nods his head at the empty glass in Arrash’s hand. “For the pint.”

Arrash opens his mouth both in surprise and to start to protest—and then he spots the hint of a smile lurking in the corner of his Sergeant’s mouth. So this is the cost of their friendly chat. This is what lets them go back to belligerent DS and beleaguered TDC tomorrow morning.

Arrash huffs a disbelieving laugh and digs through his trouser pocket for change, coming up with a crumpled five pound note. He makes a show of reluctantly dropping it into Sands’ outstretched palm.

“I’m keeping the change,” Sands says.

 

* * *

 

Arrash heads home after leaving the pub, making a small detour to pick up milk and a bottle of wine.

He pockets his keys and walks down the apartment hallway, pausing to admire the view as he goes. It never gets old.

Stefan can usually be found in the sitting room with the news on around this time, often throwing pieces of whatever he’s eating at the screen if the broadcasters say things he’s not happy about. Tonight, he’s nowhere to be found in their shared spaces, so Arrash can only surmise that he’s still annoyed if he’s shut himself away. He puts the milk in the fridge and heads for the closed door to Stefan’s bedroom, knocking briskly.

The door opens after a brief but tense wait to reveal Stefan, looking more weary than annoyed, really, which is a promising start. His hair is sticking up in a manner reminiscent of a bird’s nest and he’s bundled up in jogging bottoms and a black hoodie.

A familiar black hoodie.

“Is that mine?” Arrash blurts, forgetting all about his planned apology speech.

“What?” Stefan retreats backwards into his room a little and wraps his arms around himself protectively. “No, it’s mine. I thought you were out tonight?”

Arrash ignores this to press on because he’s certain now. “It _is_ mine,” he says. “It’s the one I gave you after you spent the night on my sofa that time. You never did give it back. Look, there’s a hole in the collar right there.”

Stefan shuffles his feet. “I thought it was mine,” he mumbles, but it sounds like a lie. He doesn’t even look for the damning evidence of the collar, just glances down and away from Arrash, pulling the sleeves of the hoodie down over his hands.

“Don’t stretch those,” Arrash says absently because he cannot help himself, it seems. “I mean—I wanted to apologise.” He holds out the bottle of wine. “Here, I’m returning the favour.”

Taking the bottle, Stefan’s lips quirk up on the right as he brings it to his chest and peers down at the label. “This is more expensive than the one I got for you.”

Arrash shrugs, hoping it comes across as nonchalant when he feels anything but. His palms are sweating for God’s sake. He tucks them in the pockets of his jacket out of sight. “Course it is,” he says. “I’m not a cheapskate, unlike some.”

Stefan doesn’t respond, looking down at the label of the wine with a frown now. The silence compels Arrash to power on with that speech he agonised over on the way here.

“Listen,” he says, “I wanted to say I’m sorry for being a dick. Work’s work, I get it. There are things I’m not supposed to tell you about what I do. But you could trust me a bit more—I’m not going to blab if you tell me to keep quiet about something.”

“I know,” Stefan says, finally looking up from the bottle. His smile is a fraction of the megawatt grin Arrash is painfully used to, but it still feels like a victory to see even that. No matter how much of a shit Arrash is being, he finds that Stefan always just seems to smile at him like he doesn’t want to be anywhere else, _with_ anyone else in the world.

“Is it too much to ask that you let me know if you’re out doing undercover stuff? Maybe send me a text to let me know you’re all right and when you’re coming home?”

There’s the full grin. Arrash feels a prickle of heat in his face then and wants to _die_ because this cannot be happening to him. He cannot be blushing at the age of twenty-six over Stefan Kowolski, the eternal thorn in his side.

“You worry about me,” Stefan declares.

“I—” It’s pointless denying it, but he’s not going to admit it outright. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to talk to strangers?” he asks, but the joke feels limp and flat.

“You worry about me,” Stefan repeats. There’s a pleased note in his tone so Arrash relents.

“Yes, all right.” He sighs out a long breath. “I worry about you, okay? So just send me a text in future to let me know you aren’t being felt up by rich twats.”

“Can do,” Stefan says, nodding. His grin turns impish. “So you worry specifically about me being ‘felt up’?”

Arrash shakes his head, unable to stop his own grin tipping his mouth up in return. “You’re such a dick.”

“You _worry_ about my dick.”

Arrash snatches the wine bottle back from him, smile widening at Stefan’s gape of surprise. “I’m opening this,” he says.

“That’s my apology gift!”

“Fine,” Arrash says, already walking away towards the kitchen. “Come get— Oof!”

Stefan jumps on his back and they both tumble to the floor. Arrash lets go of the bottle on the way down and thankfully it doesn’t shatter, dropping onto the carpet in the hallway and rolling out of reach.

“Get off me,” Arrash mumbles, more fed up than angry, face mashed uncomfortably into the floor.

Stefan’s whole weight is pinning him down. His warm chest is plastered along Arrash’s back and Arrash can feel his heartbeat. It seems elevated, probably from chasing him down the hallway and _tackling_ him, the bastard.

“Make me,” Stefan challenges and why, _why_ does that have to sound so flirtatious to Arrash? This is ridiculous. _Arrash_ is ridiculous, honestly, what is the matter with him lately?

He pushes himself up off the floor and succeeds in throwing Stefan off at the same time.

“You know what?” he asks once he’s upright again. “I don’t feel like drinking it now. I’m going to bed.”

“It’s barely gone seven!” Stefan protests. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you? I—”

“I’m fine,” Arrash says. “I’m tired, that’s all. Just let it go, yeah?”

He heads for his own bedroom, leaving Stefan in the hallway with a confused, kicked-puppy expression that he can’t look at any longer without cracking.

He’s fucked.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Stefan leans in his usual place in the corner of the kitchen and warily eyes Arrash from behind his bowl of cereal. It’s an ungodly mix of the sugariest brands of cereal he could get his hands on, swimming in semi-skimmed milk until it becomes a soggy mass that Stefan will happily munch on to start the day if he’s not stuffing himself with a full English breakfast instead.

He’s still wearing Arrash’s hoodie, not yet dressed for work like Arrash is. If he’s trying to make some kind of point with that deliberate choice, Arrash hasn’t got it.

“What?” Arrash asks when Stefan’s tentative scrutiny becomes too much. He’s sat at the table like a civilised person, perusing the newspaper with a slice of toast.

Stefan shrugs. “You said sorry to me last night, seems like you’re the one still in a mood.”

“I am not—” Arrash closes his eyes, unclenches his jaw. “I am not in a mood,” he finishes, calmly as you like.

“Right.”

Repetitive crunching fills the ensuing silence between them and Arrash changes tack. “So I didn’t get you in trouble at work, I take it?”

Again, Stefan shrugs. He’s overly fond of the gesture—just another thing about him that drives Arrash crazy. “Marcus and Eleanor weren’t happy about Walsh being hospitalised, but they accepted there wasn’t anything I could have done about some chivalrous stranger trying to protect my virtue.”

Arrash has to smile at the description. “That how it was?”

“Oh yeah. He earned himself a favour from the maiden and everything.”

“I’ll look forward to cashing that in,” Arrash says with a quiet snort. He doubts it will ever come to fruition. If anything, Stefan will decide he owes _him_ still.

“Oh, no, I meant—” Stefan drops his spoon in the bowl to gesture at his cheek. He puckers up his lips and makes a kissing sound. “Favour. Like a handkerchief, or whatever they did back then.”

And here Arrash was hoping that kiss would never be brought up again. He didn’t know what to make of it when it happened, he’s no closer to understanding it now. Stefan and his theatrics.

“Or whatever,” he agrees, voice sounding distant to his own ears.

“Look at you,” Stefan crows, “you’ve gone all red!”

Damn. “It’s hot in here,” Arrash says. “You insist on having the heating up all the way _all_ the time, do you never think about our bills?”

“Hot, yeah. Okay.” Stefan pushes himself off the counter and dumps his bowl and spoon in the sink.

“You gonna wash those?”

“I’m going to rinse them,” Stefan says, doing just that. “And I’m going to wash them too. Hand me your plate?”

Half-stunned that Stefan is doing the dishes at all, Arrash gets up and does as he’s told. Their fingers brush as Stefan takes the plate from him and Arrash has to suppress the appalling little shudder his body seems to think is the correct reaction to that.

Arrash clears his throat, tightens the knot of his tie, and takes his jacket off the back of the chair to put it on. “I have to go in early,” he lies. “I’ll see you after work?”

“Mm, no,” Stefan says, “I’m having dinner with Leila.”

Arrash freezes, one arm through one sleeve and the other suspended in mid-air now. “You’re doing _what_?”

“Relax,” Stefan says with a laugh, “it’s perfectly innocent. Two mates getting together to catch up and talk a few things through. It was her idea, okay? I didn’t pester her to meet.”

“Maybe I’ll join you then,” Arrash says, keeping his tone light and casual. “Like you joined us that time.”

“Not if I don’t tell you where we’re meeting. I learned from your mistake.”

Stefan grins like the Goddamn Cheshire Cat. Meanwhile, Arrash has perhaps never felt less like smiling. He feels like there may as well be nothing in between his stomach and the floor.

Leila never did answer him when he asked whether she _would_ go for Stefan, in the end. He hasn’t been able to bear the idea of them dating from day one, back when he thought the arrogant sod he met at the duathlon was in no way good enough for his sister. He’s _still_ not good enough for his sister. Arrash has no clue what it means that he maybe doesn’t think the same is true though when it comes to Stefan being good enough for him, as a friend _or_ anything else.

“Come on,” Stefan chides, walking over to him with hands still damp and covered in soap bubbles. “Stop daydreaming. If you have to go early, I don’t want you to be late.”

Stefan leans in and for one absurd, heart-stopping moment, Arrash thinks he’s going to kiss him. He does—but he goes for the cheek again. This time it’s a loud, _obnoxious_ smack of a kiss. When he steps back, he leaves wet handprints on the shoulders of Arrash’s jacket. What the hell.

“What the hell?” Arrash demands.

“Have a good day at work,” Stefan says. “I’ll see you later, _kochanie_.”

“You’re repulsive,” Arrash tells him, scrubbing at his damp cheek. “And what does that even mean? Is it Polish for ‘idiot’?”

Stefan’s smile is beatific. “How did you know?”

 

* * *

 

After a long day of carefully maintaining the façade that nothing is wrong around DS Sands while they interview people of interest in their latest case, Arrash arrives home to an empty flat.

He’s contemplated texting Leila all day to grill her about her meeting with Stefan this evening. He typed out and aborted a few messages at lunchtime, becoming more and more frustrated with himself after every failed attempt to express himself.

When it comes down to it, there’s simply no way of putting into words a reason that Leila _shouldn’t_ date Stefan. Now he knows him better, Arrash knows he’s a good bloke—he wouldn’t mess her around or hurt her. He’d treat her with the respect she deserves and he clearly genuinely likes her. What more can an older brother ask for, really?

Thinking about it again now, he comes up with literally nothing that he could say to Leila to steer her away from Stefan. He can’t claim that the man’s a womaniser or that he’s got no prospects or that he’s got a temper. The worst Arrash can come up with is that he’s messy and irritating and even those arguments are weak when Arrash is reluctantly amused by 95% of his antics and tolerant of the other 5%.

This inability to criticise Stefan is what makes Arrash realise: the only reason he’s so against Leila and Stefan forming a relationship at this point is because of his own burgeoning feelings for Stefan.

How did he let this happen? How did he get lumbered with the full weight of this bulky, awkward affection? It goes well beyond their playful camaraderie and their collaboration for work. This is the stuff of nightmares. This is tapping his foot each morning when Stefan is singing Journey or Abba or Bruno Mars off-key in the shower again instead of yelling at him to shut up. This is buying white grapes despite his own preference for red. This is never winning an argument when Stefan wants him to do something or go somewhere.

This is wanting all of Stefan’s attention, his clutter, his daft quirks and his bad habits.

God help him, he wants _Stefan._

And Stefan wants Leila. Stefan is—from all the evidence gathered so far—straight.

Shit.

There’s not much for Arrash to do now but wallow in his bad luck and poor choices. He decides to drag his duvet into the sitting room, tuck himself up, and watch TV like he would when he was ill or upset about something as a kid.

When he flicks through the DVDs and their planner on the Sky box, he discounts more than half of the titles he sees on the basis that Stefan was adamant they watch some of the films together on Friday nights, which are rapidly becoming pizza-beer-and-movie-nights where they stay up and watch whatever Stefan picks that Arrash doesn’t vehemently disagree with. Usually it’s films each of them never saw but wanted to when they were on at the cinema. For the last couple of Fridays, Liam Neeson has been waging a one-man war across Europe.

It’s Wednesday today though. No pizza-beer-and-movie-night. No Stefan with murmured commentary in his ear when they watch a film that he’s seen but Arrash hasn’t.

No Stefan.

For lack of anything better, Arrash ends up watching old re-runs of comedy shows. At least he gets a laugh in here or there whilst watching QI.

He’s blankly sat through six episodes of this or that when he hears the front door open with a quiet hiss and shut with a quieter click. Stefan’s trying very hard to be considerate, given that it’s gone ten o’clock.

Stefan wanders into the sitting room and gives that typical enthusiastic grin at seeing him there.

“You waited up,” he says. “Also you look like a slug.”

“Thanks,” Arrash grumbles from inside his cocoon of sheets. “And I didn’t wait up, I’m just sitting here.”

Stefan walks over to the sofa and kicks in the general direction of Arrash’s hip until he wriggles more to one side so that Stefan can sit beside him. “Did you miss me that much, _kochanie_?”

“Seriously, is that going to become some sort of nickname?”

“Maybe. That or _słoneczko_.”

“Great. Another insult?”

“The worst.”

All of a sudden, Stefan jams his feet under Arrash’s legs. He somehow manages to insinuate them through an opening in the bedding and, after a bit more wriggling, sets his cold feet squarely in Arrash’s lap. His trousers are no protection against blocks of ice.

“Jesus!” Arrash exclaims. “Warn a guy, would you?”

Stefan only smiles at him as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

“Did you have a good date with my _sister_?” Arrash asks bitterly after a brief period of them both watching Mock The Week in silence. The episode is so old that the government was still a coalition at that time.

“It wasn’t a date!” Stefan protests. “If anything, it was a conversation that put to rest any _thought_ of dating.”

This gets Arrash’s full attention. “Oh?”

Stefan shrugs, eyes on the TV rather than Arrash. “I told you I really like her and I meant it. She’s great. But I don’t think dating would work.”

Despite how little Arrash _wants_ it to work, he can’t help but bristle a bit on Leila’s behalf. “Why not?”

“She’s going away for med school soon, I’m like a better version of James Bond if James Bond was Polish and more interested in serious fraud. It could never work between us. Plus, it’s like you said: we live together.”

Ah. That ill-thought-out argument he made that had no bearing whatsoever on whether Stefan should pursue Leila or not. He’s been giving himself away for longer than he realised, really.

He’s about to refute his own argument when Stefan continues, “ _Plus_ , I kind of really…” Stefan trails off and winces in Arrash’s direction before finishing with: “really like someone else?”

“Fickle of you,” Arrash notes. “This is my sister we’re talking about.”

“I know,” Stefan says, and he sounds utterly miserable about it, which goes some way towards earning him lenience from Arrash. “I’m a total shit. But to be fair, this other person has _not_ made it easy to tell if they’re interested! I was giving up on them!”

“So who is this person?” Arrash asks, not allowing himself to dwell on further disappointment or jealousy at hearing that there’s _another_ person Stefan wants. “What stopped you giving up on them?”

As the words leave his mouth, Arrash notes the pronoun that Stefan has forced him to adopt. _Them._ Singular them, which Arrash has used himself in the past for specific reasons. Surely Stefan isn’t—

“He did something that made me see how much he cares.”

Oh.

“You’ve gone all weird on me again,” Stefan says. “Is this about me not-so-tactfully coming out as bi? Because I thought you might have guessed? I mean there was that time I said that thing about... Anyway, listen, I know I probably should have mentioned it before we moved in, but there just never seemed to be a good time and it’s not like—”

“No, no,” Arrash cuts him off because Stefan is genuinely starting to look a bit distressed and he can’t have that. Not over this. “It’s, um—I’m gay? So.”

Stefan’s mouth tips out of its uncomfortable grimace and upward into a smile that is heart-breaking in how relieved it is. “Oh. Yeah?”

“Yeah. I should have told you, I know.”

“Well,” Stefan says with a shrug. “Hardly matters now. Might as well just plant a rainbow flag outside the front door and have done with it.”

“Here be queers,” Arrash says.

“Get used to it.”

They both laugh then and Arrash has this bizarre feeling of light-headedness. He feels like all his tightly wound denials and omitted truths have just unravelled, leaving his core exposed for Stefan to see. Curiously, the feeling doesn’t bring the expected wave of vulnerability. He just feels free. For once, he _wants_ to be seen.

“Was admitting that a big weight off?” Stefan asks, head tilted to one side as he studies him.

Arrash blows out a long breath and runs a hand down the length of his face. Once again, Stefan understands him precisely. “More than you know,” he says. “More than _I_ knew it would be, maybe.”

Amazingly, Stefan then reaches over and _punches his shoulder_. “Aw, proud of you, buddy!”

Arrash can only gape at him. At the contradiction of him. “Why do you _always_ ruin the moment?” he asks.

Stefan smirks. “It’s my special skill.”

Arrash shakes his head, but he’s smiling too. He can’t help it. Then he remembers how this confession-session came about.

“So this guy,” he begins, slow and careful. “What are you going to do about him now?”

Stefan considers his answer for a moment, then nods like he’s made up his mind. “I’m going to wait for him to be ready.”

“Could be waiting some time,” Arrash points out.

Stefan shrugs. “He’s worth it.”

Of course he is. Arrash nobly keeps his sigh to himself. So it turns out Stefan _is_ into men and he _still_ doesn’t have a chance. Fate must love him: to make him want this idiot in the first place, and then said idiot isn’t even interested? He must have done something bad in a previous life.

“Well, good,” Arrash says, shifting about awkwardly on the sofa, not knowing quite what to say now. He settles on something flippant: “So I don’t have to worry about you putting the moves on my sister anymore then?”

“You think I have moves?” Stefan asks in a hopeful tone.

Arrash hits him with one of the sofa cushions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So kochanie and słoneczko are, to the very best of my knowledge, Polish endearments as opposed to insults, as you may have already surmised. If any Polish speakers think I'm a total dumbass, please feel more than free to tell me I've used the wrong word or spelled it wrong or whatever other cock up I'm likely to have perpetrated.


	3. Don't act like it's a bad thing to fall in love with me

Arrash has the faint hope that it might get better after that. Maybe he’ll just accept that Stefan isn’t interested and be able to move on.

In reality, though, he can only see it getting worse. Before, he’d had the comfort of thinking it could never happen just because Stefan didn’t fancy men. Now he knows that’s not right and it makes him think  _if I could just…_

 _Just what_ exactly he doesn’t know. It’s maddening.

This, he realises, is why you don’t move in with someone you have feelings for. How did he not sort that out in his mind before they found this flat? He could have spared himself a lot of grief and heartache if he had.

Now he has to deal with Stefan walking around half-naked after showers. Now he has to cope with feet in his lap, hands on his shoulders. Now he has to go for morning runs or bike rides with Stefan on the weekends and they do evening gym sessions after work because they  _live_ together—there’s no pretending he’s busy with something else, he has to  _make_ himself busy if he wants to avoid Stefan.

And he doesn’t want to avoid Stefan at all. Despite all his eye-rolls and his complaints, he loves Stefan’s company. He loves how blunt Stefan is, how much Stefan clearly enjoys life. He loves Stefan’s enthusiasm and his optimism and his bad jokes and even his competitive goading.

He loves—

Yeah, not going there. Nope.

In short: he loves being around Stefan. He doesn’t want to avoid him over something as stupid as a crush that’s got way out of hand.

Currently, Stefan is making pancakes, singing along to the radio, and dancing in a way that’s more about swaying with emphasis rather than actual steps.

“ _I can’t stop the feeling! So just dance, dance, dance. Can’t stop the feeling!”_

His falsetto is... actually not that bad? Christ, he’s even started to think his  _singing_ is good. This is a slippery slope.

It’s Thursday, which means it’s one day until Friday, which—in Stefan’s mind—is always enough of a reason for good cheer and pancakes. Also it’s a day ending in ‘y’ so of course he’s singing and dancing.

“ _Oooh, it’s something magical, it’s in the air, it’s in my blood, it’s rushing on—_ ”

This damn song is on the radio  _far too much_ for Arrash’s sanity. Stefan pauses his unabashedly impassioned singing when he spots Arrash, giving him a quick grin and gesturing at the pancake he’s working on with the spatula in his hand. “You want?” he asks.

He’ll be expecting a ‘no’, so Arrash decides to confound him. “Please,” he replies, sitting down at the table.

“What? No ‘Stefan, pancakes are bad for you and my body is a temple’ today?”

“I don’t sound like that. Also, it may have escaped your notice, but since moving in with you, I’ve been eating way more crap because you’re a bad influence.”

“You love it,” Stefan says smugly, and then segues into the song again. “ _Under the lights when everything goes, nowhere to hide when I’m getting you close._ ”

 _If only_ , Arrash thinks. He shakes his head and opens his newspaper, although he finds he can barely read it for acutely  _aware_ he is of Stefan.

This time, it’s the line of his shoulders in his t-shirt, the ease and confidence he moves to the beat of the song with. It’s the different colours in his hair getting highlighted by the early morning sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling window. It’s the notion that his hair is probably as soft to the touch as it looks.

Yeah, it’s only going to get worse from here.

 

* * *

 

When Arrash checks his phone at lunchtime that day, he’s received a whatsapp message from Stefan, a snapchat from Stefan, and a regular text message from Stefan.

He decides to go in order of what’s likely to be least to most crazy content and opens the text message first.

_Going on undercover job tonight. just letting u know so u dont worry the whole time mrs kowolski. will be at that cow pub until about 9 so not far from home. If i dont text at 9 come save me oh knight in shining skinny tie_

Arrash smiles—seems Stefan took his request to heart, even if he  _still_ has to be a dick about it. ‘Mrs Kowolski’ indeed. Shaking his head, he opens the whatsapp message next.

_Taken 3 for film night 2moro? or r u fed up w liam neeson fcking up europe? I mean hes fit for an older guy but srsly how many ppl does he have in his life to get kidnapped? :(_

Arrash laughs out loud at that, earning himself a confused look from Sands. Followed by a glare, naturally. He quickly reigns in his mirth and swaps to the snapchat app.

The latest from Stefan is a picture of a grey squirrel running across what looks like a park. The caption is simply a string of exclamation marks.

Will Arrash  _ever_ fully understand him?

Even as he looks at the picture for the few seconds before it disappears, he gets a notification that Stefan has sent another picture. Opening this one, he’s confronted with Stefan’s face. He’s smiling and giving the camera a wink. The caption on this one reads:  _dont wait up tonight kochanie. U need ur beauty sleep ;)_

Before the picture can vanish and the caption along with it, Arrash presses the necessary buttons on his phone to take a screenshot. Now he’s got the proper spelling, he’s going to check what that bloody word means once and for all. As he types ‘Polish to English’ into Google, he notices Sands leaning towards him and reading over his shoulder. He stamps on the urge to move away and hide what he’s doing—it will only make Sands more determined to invade his privacy.

When he’s typed ‘koc’ into the Polish box, the translator starts to tell him that means ‘blanket’. Weird. As he types the ‘ha’, the English box now says ‘love’, which is… confusing. By the time he finishes typing the full word, his heart is racing. He can feel his pulse thundering in his ears, which have suddenly become very warm.

“Why on earth do you want to know what ‘sweetheart’ is in Polish?” Sands asks. “Are you trying to  _woo_ someone, Sayyad? Seems like a piss-poor way to go about it, if you ask me.”

“Wha—Do you  _mind?”_ Arrash splutters, already in the grip of a mild crisis over the fact that Stefan has apparently been calling him  _sweetheart_ for the last few days. It’s got to be a joke. Right? Haha, they’re an old married couple. He's Mrs Kowolski. That kind of thing.

Sands leans away from him again, shrugging as he goes back to his bacon roll. Honestly, he’s as bad as Stefan is for eating rubbish.

 _Stefan_. Stefan, Stefan, Stefan. What the hell does he do about this?

His phone buzzes in his hand and he sees that Stefan has sent him an instant message through snapchat now.

_It tells me when u save my snaps :P do u just like my face that much?_

Another buzz, another picture. This time it’s Stefan doing ‘Blue Steel’ with a truly sinful pout shaping his lips.

The caption reads:  _more where that came from._

God help him, he’s not sure he’ll survive more. This is all way too much.

“Oh,” Sands says then, once  _again_ over his shoulder and looking down at the photo. “This is the bloke, isn’t it? What was his name—Stefan? He looks familiar… And what’s wrong with his face?”

Arrash barely has the brain power to spare to be impressed by Sands remembering Stefan’s name from their chat, let alone worry about him possibly remembering his face from that one time they met under awkward circumstances with a car merrily burning away in the background. He sighs.

“There’s nothing wrong with his face, he’s just an idiot.”

‘Idiot’ may as well be his  _own_ pet name for Stefan at this point. Jesus. Sweetheart, Stefan has been calling him  _sweetheart_. Arrash’s mind seems to be stuck on that thought like a broken record.

What does it mean? It seems obvious, but it  _can’t_ be.

Sands give him a look that suggests he still thinks there might very well be something wrong with Stefan. And possibly with Arrash too. Of course, in many ways, the man is actually right.

“Hypothetical scenario,” Arrash begins slowly. “What do you do when you find out that your flatmate, who you thought was insulting you and also thought was straight, has actually been calling you ‘sweetheart’ the past few days?”

Sands just laughs at him. He laughs and laughs and ends up choking on a piece of bacon, which is perhaps the only small bit of justice and comfort Arrash has in the entire  _world_.

 

* * *

 

An alert on his phone lets Arrash know that nine o’clock has come. He’s used the evening so far to continue plodding through Blackstone’s investigator’s manual and workbook, cursing Heywood and his sadistic punishment all the while. And Stefan—he’s been cursing Stefan for earning him the punishment in the first place and for being the reason that Arrash needed a better distraction than more re-runs of old satire shows.

The alert isn’t Stefan’s text tone (thankfully not yet tampered with by Stefan) but an alarm Arrash set on getting home.

Surely Stefan wouldn’t have forgotten? Not after the big deal Arrash made it into, not after promising to text earlier...

The workbook question he’s been struggling to recall the answer to begins to blur on the page. Worry sets in and Arrash gives it maybe two minutes before he decides there’s no convincing himself that he’s overreacting here. After what almost happened with Kumalah, he’s taking no chances. In a matter of seconds, he’s grabbed his coat, keys, and ID in case he needs it, and he’s out the door.

On his way, he calls Stefan and, after several fruitless rings, it goes to voicemail.

“Stefan,” he says through gritted teeth as he breaks into a run, “I swear to God, I’m going to kill you myself if you don’t pick up.”

He ends the call and tries again. Still no answer.

The Cow is over by Westfield, which  _is_ close to their flat but not close enough that Arrash isn’t panting for breath by the time he gets there.

He bursts in through the doors to startled looks from the patrons and scouts around for Stefan. He’s nowhere to be found. Arrash goes over to the first staff member he can pick out and nearly crashes into her in his hurry to get her attention.

“I’m looking for someone,” he says at once, no time for an apology for almost sending her stumbling. Arrash pulls out his warrant card and flashes it at the woman, then goes for his phone. It takes him a good thirty seconds to find a clear, non-blurry picture of Stefan that  _doesn’t_ have him poking out his tongue or scrunching up his forehead. “This man. Have you seen him tonight?”

“He just left,” the woman says, peering at the photo. “Maybe five minutes ago? The man he left with seemed pretty angry over something.”

“ _Shit_. Which way did they go?”

The woman points out of the window in the direction Arrash had just come from and he dashes off without a backward glance.

He’s in a full-on panic now because how is he going to find them? He rings Stefan’s phone again, hoping against hope to hear it ringing. He keeps running back the way he came and slows every now and then to turn in a circle, looking around desperately, pushing through groups of people in his way.

He runs, he looks around, he pushes people. He rings Stefan’s phone again.

And then he hears it.

“ _Don’t be so quick to walk away, dance with me. I wanna rock your body, please stay._ ”

Arrash has never,  _ever_ been so glad to hear Justin Timberlake’s voice. He sprints towards the faint sound, heart pounding violently against his ribs, lungs burning and pleading for more air.

He finds Stefan in an alleyway behind one of the restaurants where they store their bins, being held up against the wall by a man shouting in his face. He’s struggling to fight back, all flailing elbows and knees.

“Stop that!” the man orders, using his hold on Stefan to pull him away from the wall slightly and then slam him back against it. “Who do you work for? Tell me!”

“Hey!” Arrash yells. “Police!”

The man whips his head around and Arrash sees it’s the same man he punched three nights ago in the restaurant: Professor Walsh. He’s sporting two black eyes and a very swollen nose.

Arrash is more concerned with Stefan’s split lower lip.

Suddenly, his body feels too small and tight to contain the rage inside that’s clamouring to be let out. It’s the same feeling as when he originally hit this man before, but magnified now that Stefan is actually,  _visibly_ hurt.

“I—wait, you again?” Walsh says incredulously when he recognises Arrash. Stefan takes advantage of his brief distraction and lax hold to shove Walsh away and get free.

When Stefan staggers over to his side, Arrash holds out one arm to push Stefan behind himself and advances on Walsh.

“Me again,” he says. He makes a call and brings his phone to his ear. “This is DC Sayyad, I’d like to report an assault taking place in Stratford near Westfield shopping centre. Suspect is an apparently unarmed white male in his forties. Yes, send backup—”

Before Arrash can complete the request, Walsh has darted out of his reach and run out the opposite end of the alley. Arrash hangs up the call and is just about to run after him when Stefan’s hand grasps his wrist. His fingers slip down and it’s dangerously close to hand-holding, which is enough to stop Arrash in his tracks.

“Let him go,” Stefan says.

“But he—”

Stefan draws an object out of his pocket and holds it up for Arrash to see—it’s a mobile phone, and it’s not Stefan’s. “I’ve got everything we need on him right here,” he says. “He caught me going through his things; he didn’t realise I’d already taken this.”

“He could’ve killed you,” Arrash says. He glances over his shoulder in the direction Walsh went, part of his mind set on going after that bastard still.

“I had  _my_ backup.” Stefan smiles at him, then winces when the move must pull at the cut on his mouth. “Ow. Can we just go home? Please?”

Arrash takes a moment before he nods, but he was never going to refuse. He places a quick call to say he was mistaken over the assault he just reported and that the situation is under control.

“Come on,” he says to Stefan. “Are you all right to walk?”

“I’m fine. He just caught me off guard is all. Got one lucky hit in, but I had a move—”

“Your moves are shit,” Arrash tells him shortly, but his voice waivers on the last word. His hands are shaking and he feels weak all of a sudden. His awareness has expanded again from his previous tunnelled vision and hearing until the night seems full of bright lights and loud sounds. It’s the after-effects of his adrenaline surge kicking in.

Stefan seems to recognise the drain on his energy because he reaches out and grasps Arrash’s shoulder, leaning on him but letting Arrash take strength from him in return. “Let’s go home,” he says.

Arrash nods again, not trusting his voice now. His throat seems to have clogged up.

They don’t speak as they go, but Stefan holds onto him the whole way.

 

* * *

 

When they get through the door to the flat, it’s like a switch is flipped. The overwhelming sense of  _rightness_ to the place seems to give them both instant relief. They’re home now, back in their own private bubble where it’s a totally different world from everything out there.

They go through to the sitting area and Arrash deposits Stefan onto the sofa. He goes down heavily, like it’s a relief to just not have to stay upright any longer, like he could fall asleep any second. Meanwhile, Arrash just knows he’s going to struggle to sleep tonight with that odd ‘wired but tired’ sort of feeling that comes after all these near-misses they keep having.

“I’m going to get the first aid gear,” Arrash says. “Where else are you hurt?”

“It’s really not that bad,” Stefan replies, shifting around to make himself more comfortable. “I’ll wake up with some bruises, that’s all.”

“Well, your lip definitely needs looking at. What about your head?”

“What about it?”

“Where you hit the wall?”

Stefan waves a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing.”

That means it could be something. “I’ll be the judge of that,” Arrash says threateningly, walking away towards the bathroom.

Once he’s there, he lets himself release the long, shuddering breath he’s had stored up since they left the alleyway. If he hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t asked Stefan to text…

He slaps a palm against the mirror on the wall to steady himself and gives his reflection a stern look. Thoughts like that are no use to him. Right now, he just has to make sure Stefan is okay.

He washes his hands, grabs what he needs from the cabinet, and heads back into the sitting area to find Stefan gingerly prodding at his mouth.

“Stop touching that when your hands aren’t even clean,” Arrash commands. “I don’t want it getting infected.”

Stefan looks up at him and his expression turns hunted when he sees the TCP antiseptic in Arrash’s hand. “Ah, I don’t need that,” he says, predictable as ever.

“Don’t be such a baby; it’ll only sting for a bit.” Arrash sets the bottle down on the table and fishes out a single ball of cotton wool from the pack. He takes a seat on the sofa by Stefan, who’s still looking mutinous. “Unless you want me to call Leila to do this?”

“Her and her needle fixation,” Stefan grumbles. “Fine, do it. Just be careful, yeah?”

Arrash smirks. “I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t end up with a trout pout.”

Even as he makes the joke, the reality of having to  _touch Stefan’s mouth_ begins to set in. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Now is  _not_ the time to remember all those wildly inappropriate dreams he’s had about doing just that.

“I’ll just, um. Look at the back of your head first, shall I?”

Stefan frowns at him, his eyes narrowing. “I thought we agreed that was nothing.”

“No, Stefan,  _you_ said that, but I never agreed to anything. Now shut up and turn around, would you?”

With a put-upon sigh, Stefan does as he’s asked, turning his head away from Arrash so he can see the back of it.

There’s no blood in his hair, which is a good sign. Hopefully there’s no broken skin. “I’m just going to—” Arrash pauses, swallows, “—feel around for any lumps, okay?”

So if touching Stefan’s lip seemed like seriously dodgy ground, it transpires that even touching Stefan’s head isn’t a lot safer. Particularly when it involves running his hand through his hair and finding that, yes, it  _is_ incredibly soft, and is he imagining it or is Stefan—yep, he’s tipping his head back into Arrash’s hand.

Then he hisses in a pained breath and Arrash stills his questing fingers. “Did that hurt?”

“Why does everyone always ask that question? No, it felt  _great_ , do it again!”

Arrash bites his tongue and quells the reflex desire to just press on that area again. Instead, he runs his fingertips carefully over and around it. Stefan gives a weird little roll of his shoulders, half moving away from Arrash’s hand and half pushing back towards it. “Tickles,” he says by way of explanation, but his voice sounds slightly faint.

Arrash clears his throat and draws his hand back. “It’s not raised,” he says. “There’s no swelling at least. Probably don’t need to be worried about concussion.”

“Excellent. My luck’s improving.”

For his part, Arrash is pretty sure  _his_ luck is taking a steep nosedive. Here goes nothing. “Right, turn back around then,” he says, trying to keep his tone brisk. “I’ve got to do your lip.”

Stefan shifts and draws up one knee onto the sofa so it’s easier for him to face Arrash. He glances anxiously at the TCP bottle and then back to Arrash.

“You  _baby_ ,” Arrash says with a roll of his eyes. “I’ll be gentle, all right?”

“Better be.”

Arrash soaks the cotton wool in the antiseptic and uses those few seconds for some internal hysterics, wondering how best to do this. Stefan closes his eyes and parts his lips, which makes everything about ten times  _worse_ , God, he didn’t think it could  _get_ any worse.

Arrash’s throat has gone completely dry. There’s a click when he opens his mouth to speak again. “So I just have to—”

He reaches out to hold Stefan’s face steady and Stefan flinches back at that first contact. His eyes open again, almost comically large. “Sorry,” he says.

“Stop  _moving_.”

Arrash reaches out again and this time Stefan holds himself perfectly still. It’s taking effort, if the look of concentration on his face is anything to go by.

“Relax,” Arrash tells him. “Stef, it’ll be over before you know it.”

Some of the tension leaves Stefan’s face and shoulders at that and he gives a slight dip of his chin. Arrash sets the cotton wool against his lip with the lightest pressure and Stefan’s only reaction is a few blinks before he closes his eyes again. No jerk, no gasp, no shouted curse.

“That’s it,” Arrash encourages in a low voice.

He dabs and wipes as gently as he can, the repetitive motion of his hand becoming oddly soothing as his focus narrows to this simple act. The stillness of the flat around them seems exaggerated somehow, but it’s comforting rather than disconcerting. He can hear Stefan breathing, the rate reducing the longer Arrash works.

“You know,” Stefan says when Arrash takes his hand away, “only my mum and dad call me ‘Stef’.”

Arrash throws the used cotton wool into the bin he’d brought through from the bathroom. “Yeah? Do you mind me using it then?”

“No!” Stefan shakes his head earnestly. “No, I like it. Reminds me of home.”

A bead of fresh blood blooms on Stefan’s newly cleaned lip. Arrash frowns at it, annoyed, and opens a sterile gauze packet. He’ll have to apply pressure until it stops. “You miss it?” he asks.

“I was only young when we came here.” Stefan shrugs. “I miss the lakes. There were a lot of lakes where I was from.”

“Sounds nice.”

Arrash leans forward and gestures for Stefan to do the same. He tips Stefan’s head up a fraction with a hand beneath his chin and presses the gauze over the cut.

“My dad was the first one to start calling me ‘Rash’,” he says, because it’s the obvious truth to give back in the face of what Stefan said to him. “Mum’s always used my full name, but Leila picked it up from him.”

“And I picked it up from her,” Stefan says, voice muffled by the gauze. His jaw works against Arrash’s hand as he speaks. “Do  _you_ mind?”

“Would’ve stopped you way before now if I did.”

Arrash smiles at him. Incapable of doing anything else apparently, Stefan returns it and then pulls a face. Arrash taps the underside of his chin.

“Stop undoing my work,” he chides, although it comes out far softer and less barbed than he means it to.

Lifting the gauze away, he sees that blood is still welling up, albeit more sluggish now. He presses down again.

“Nicknames are important,” Arrash says, feeling his heart rate pick up as he chooses his next words carefully. “They say a lot about how others feel about us.”

He gives Stefan a meaningful stare and Stefan meets his gaze. His eyes are wide, shining as they reflect the glow of the lamp behind Arrash. He’s got that hunted look about him again. Arrash raises his eyebrows further and Stefan sighs.

“Did you look it up?” he asks.

Arrash doesn’t answer, just takes the gauze away and inspects the wound. “I think it’s stopped bleeding,” he notes, voice as rough as Stefan’s stubble feels against his fingers. His eyes are fixed on Stefan’s lips. The lower one is definitely fuller now; they’ll need to put ice on it.

When he looks back up, he sees Stefan’s eyes are on  _his_ mouth. “Yeah?” Stefan says, equally hoarse.

There’s no mistaking these signals. Arrash is close enough to see that Stefan’s pupils are dilated, close enough to hear that his breathing has accelerated again.

“Yeah—”

Stefan surges forward and Arrash meets him in the middle. The kiss, despite their urgency in getting to it, starts tender and slow. Arrash is wary of causing Stefan pain when his mouth must already be stinging. Stefan makes a soft, hurt sound in the back of his throat anyway, but he winds his arms around Arrash’s back to keep him in place when he tries to pull away. He makes the sound again, clutching fistfuls of Arrash’s shirt as they kiss. Arrash clings back, feverish, overwrought. He opens his mouth under Stefan’s and tastes not blood but the sharp tang of the antiseptic. He sets his teeth oh-so-gently against the cut and feels dizzy when Stefan shudders against him.

“Okay,” Arrash murmurs, leaning back and away from Stefan who sways forward into his space in an attempt to keep kissing him. “Okay, whoa there.”

“Don’t wanna stop,” Stefan complains. He leans back in and Arrash lets him. He closes his eyes and waits, but the kiss doesn’t come—Stefan just brushes the tip of his nose against Arrash’s and exhales a long, low breath.

He pulls back again and they stare at each other for a good few moments, breathing heavily. Arrash can’t keep his eyes off of just how swollen Stefan’s mouth looks now, how red it’s turned. He stretches out a hand wonderingly, touches his fingertips to the split, finds it dry.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks.

Stefan shakes his head and Arrash retracts his hand. “No, it was, um. It was good.”

The haze of need starts to dissipate the longer they’re  _not_ kissing and Stefan’s previously dazed expression turns regretful. Arrash feels his stomach drop.

“I’m sorry,” Stefan says. “I shouldn’t have done that. I said I was going to wait for you and I meant it.”

“Wait for me?” Their conversation from last night comes rushing back. “Oh God, you meant  _me_.”

Stefan gapes at him. “Who else did you think I meant? I didn’t want to push you; you’d only just told me you were gay! Leila said you’re not even out to your mum.”

“I thought—Leila? You’ve talked to  _Leila_ about this?”

“I had to talk to someone! I’ve been going crazy!”

“You’ve been going crazy? What about me when you—with the  _pet names_ and the ringtones and the cheek kissing—”

“Exactly!” Stefan gestures with his hands in short frustrated jabs. “I haven’t really been subtle here, Rash!”

Arrash buries his head in his palms and groans. It's all making sense now, puzzle pieces falling into place, and this is just horrendous because Arrash is a _detective_ , how could he not put this all together along the way? 

“You’re impossible,” he says.

“ _You’re_ impossible,” Stefan retorts, crossing his arms over his chest.

Unbelievable. “What are you, twelve?”

Stefan says nothing, just glares at him. Then he asks, “So what now?”

That… is a very big question.

“I don’t know,” Arrash admits, huffing out a sigh. “I mean, I have to talk to Leila about this to start with, check she’s okay about—” Arrash gestures between them awkwardly. “And… and I do need to have the conversation with my mum. I should have done it already.”

“Took you long enough to tell her you were moving out,” Stefan admonishes.

“Remember how you joked about Jan and the guys being emotional about that kind of thing? Well, my mum genuinely  _is_ really emotional. She’s going to cry again. She’s either going to disown me or start volunteering for that London LGBT helpline.”

“Switchboard,” Stefan helpfully supplies, grinning at him.

“It’s not funny.”

All at once, Stefan sobers. “Rash, she’s your mum. From all I know about her, there’s no way she’s going to disown you.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s going to take to you as my… whatever.”

Stefan looks mock outraged, placing a hand on his chest. “Your mum  _loves_ me,” he says. “I’ll be her favourite son-in-law.”

This is... actually quite true, worryingly. When they visit now, Arrash's mum seems way more keen to ask how Stefan is doing and is he eating enough and does he want to try this new recipe she's cut out of a magazine for him? 

Arrash ducks his head, smiling. “That serious, are we?”

But Stefan doesn’t grin or smirk or laugh in return now. His mouth opens slightly, his eyes meet Arrash’s and then dart away.

A warm feeling spreads through Arrash’s chest. That answers one very important question—Stefan’s in it for the long haul. He kicks at Stefan’s foot playfully, wanting to reassure him. “So it’s Mr Stefan Sayyad for you then?” he jokes.

Stefan shakes his head and gives a quiet snort, but Arrash knows him more than well enough by now to spot how obviously relieved he is that Arrash didn’t shoot him down. “No way. I liked you first, you have to take my name.”

“What? No, I liked  _you_ first.”

“You’re kidding me! When we met you looked at me like you wanted to strangle me and chuck my body in the Thames!”

“Yeah, because you were coming on to  _my sister._ So obviously I liked you first.”

“Please, I went for Leila because she didn’t look half as uptight as you. I still liked you from the start.”

Arrash shrugs. “I was the one to ask to see you again.”

“When?!”

“After the race! I asked if you were going to be at East London triathlon, which you said ‘yes’ to despite one fatal flaw which is that you can’t actually swim! No wonder you had no idea what I was on about when I asked. How could you grow up around lakes and not learn to swim?”

“I was eight when I left Poland, that’s hardly enough time to learn to—That’s beside the point! I said ‘yes’ despite not being able to swim because I  _wanted_ to see you again. So I liked you first. Ha!”

Stefan sticks his tongue out and Arrash shakes his head. “I can’t believe I like you at all,” he says.

“You  _love_ me,” Stefan says.

Arrash has to kiss Stefan again to shut him up because— _damn him_ —he might well just be right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small epilogue left! Thank you for reading and going along with me! Also I know very little about Stratford, so apologies to any Londoners who are like... what is this girl on about? I literally barely know myself.


	4. I got that sunshine in my pocket

“You can’t _seriously_ be nervous about going to see my mum.”

Stefan tugs his second choice of t-shirt down over his head, looks at himself in the mirror, then pulls the shirt right off again.

“Still too casual,” he says, balling up the offending article of clothing and throwing it into a corner. Arrash will probably be the one to pick it up at some point. “Hand me that blue shirt? No, the one with an actual collar.”

With a sigh, Arrash pulls the shirt out of the wardrobe and holds it open, nodding for Stefan to put his arms in. “You’re not going to put a tie on, are you? I might die from the shock.”

“Do you think that would be overkill?” Stefan asks earnestly as he turns back around to face Arrash and starts buttoning the shirt.

“Stef, _all_ of this is overkill. It’s my mum, you’ve seen her about fifty times before.”

“Yeah, but I’m living in sin with her firstborn now! I want to make a good impression.”

“Well, that window of opportunity is almost certainly closed after she saw you eat spaghetti that one time.”

Stefan’s mouth opens in horror. “I’d forgotten that.”

Arrash laughs at Stefan’s expression, then again when he sees Stefan has fastened the shirt one button above each of their respective holes all the way down so it’s hanging lopsided.

“C’mere,” he says, but it’s him that steps in close to Stefan.

He starts by fixing Stefan’s rucked up collar, then slowly, purposefully unbuttons the shirt. “You,” he murmurs as he goes, “are hopeless.”

Once he has the shirt open, he dips his head to press a kiss to Stefan’s collarbone, smiling against the skin when Stefan's head starts to list back.

Then he whips it forward again and almost headbutts Arrash. “No!” he says, stepping back out of Arrash’s reach and hurriedly buttoning the shirt the correct way. “No, we can’t be late, stop being so—so distracting!”

Arrash shrugs and takes his jacket off the bed to put it on. “Can’t help it if I’m distracting.”

“You bastard, you know exactly what you’re doing.”

Arrash shrugs again and rubs his thumb across his lower lip, feeling a smile coming on. He bites his lip and raises one eyebrow.

He waits.

“You bastard.”

 

* * *

 

Arrash and Stefan fidget and shift about on the porch whilst they wait for someone to get the door. Stefan is in his fourth choice of shirt now that the other one is… somewhat indisposed. He decided to forgo the tie after all.

The pair of them are incapable of looking at each other without laughing currently or, worse, _remembering_ certain events that have just transpired. Which would be horribly inappropriate, because they’re outside Arrash’s family home about to have dinner with his mum and sister.

The door opens and Arrash’s mother appears. “Stefan, lovely to see you!” She takes Stefan’s face in her hands and presses a kiss to each of his cheeks, which turn an adorable shade of pink when she draws back. “And you, Arrash, are fifteen minutes late.”

That snaps Arrash out of his reminiscing. “Wait, what? Why am I—we’re both late!”

“But I told _you_ the time you were to come for, I hardly expect Stefan to know our family’s schedule.”

Beside him, Stefan is grinning maniacally. Arrash huffs, shakes his head, and follows his mum inside the house with Stefan trailing after him. Even from behind, he’s radiating an air of smugness. At least that’s given him some confidence and calmed his nerves, Arrash thinks.

“Leila!” his mother shouts. “Your brother is here with Stefan. Can you set the table?”

“Make Rash do it!” comes the answering shout from upstairs.

Arrash’s mum turns around and says, “I’m so sorry, Stefan, my children are always like this.”

“No problem, Mrs Sayyad, I can set the table.”

“Oh, would you?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

She bustles off back into the kitchen and Stefan smirks at Arrash, who just rolls his eyes in return. “Creep,” he says.

“Jealous,” Stefan retorts.

In the end, they both set the table together, Arrash laying out the place-mats and Stefan placing the cutlery with a look of unwarranted but endearing focus.

“I don’t think it will matter if the fork is two millimetres further out than the knife,” Arrash teases in a faux-whisper, walking up behind Stefan and leaning his chest against his back.

He insinuates his arm over the top of Stefan’s and skims his fingers down to gently take the knife from him. For a laugh, he turns it the opposite way around and drops it at an angle.

“Oops,” he says, mouth pressed to Stefan’s ear.

“Stefan, do you want—”

Both of them freeze, gaping at Arrash’s mother stood in the doorway with a tray of multiple different kinds of steaming vegetable held in her tea-towel-covered hands.

“We were just—”

“I needed help with—”

They each stop talking, realising at the same time that there is literally no excuse for why they’re pressed together like a pair of horny teenagers.

Arrash kind of wants to sink through the floor. Stefan looks as if he’s wishing for the same, but he recovers that bit quicker and springs away from Arrash to a more respectable distance. “Um, I’ll eat anything, Mrs Sayyad. It all looks… really great.”

“Wonderful,” Arrash’s mother says faintly, mouth stretched in a too-wide smile. Arrash knows that one. It’s the I-have-so-much-to-say-right-now-and-am-holding-back-all-of-it smile.

Thankfully, Leila chooses that moment to run down the stairs and join them. She opens her mouth to say something and catches sight of all their expressions. “Awkward,” she sing-songs.

Arrash glowers at her. Figuring it’s his moment to step up, he moves closer to Stefan again and slips a hand into his. They haven’t really _done_ hand-holding or PDA (determined not to be _that_ couple), so it feels at once unusual and thrilling, despite how clammy Stefan's palm is against his.

“Mum, you remember how I told you that I’m—”

Arrash stops, internally rolls his eyes at _himself_ because of course she remembers him coming out, Jesus.

His mum is smiling again, but now it’s her true smile for when she’s proud of something her children have said or done, with a hint of that indulgent smile she gets when she’s really amused by them.

“Yes, Arrash, I _do_ remember you finally getting to your point after much rambling last week.” She turns her smile on Stefan and Arrash feels his fingers twitch slightly. “I take it this is what made you tell me.”

Arrash swallows and nods. So far, so good. Stefan’s hand squeezes his.

Arrash’s mum lifts the tray in her hands. “What better way to welcome you to the family than through sharing a meal together?” she asks. “Come with me, Stefan, you can give me a hand. I know better than to ask my children.”

Stefan’s answering grin before he bounds after her is breathtaking.

 

* * *

 

“I think Stefan Sayyad sounds nice!”

“Mum, please! We’re not getting married.”

“Wait, why not? I’m totally marriage material!”

“Can I be best woman?”

_“We’re not getting married!”_

“I think we should hyphenate. Really stick it to the Daily Mail readers.”

“...I’m going to do the washing up.”

“I’ll dry! Wait for me, Mr Kowolski-Sayyad!”

“Stefan, I swear to _God_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Many thanks to [sterash/whelvenwings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings), [chaosmaka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmaka), and to Socky for looking over this in its formative stages and kindly telling me it wasn't rubbish. You guys are the best <3


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